Tuesday, 14 August 2018

Samsung has already launched Samsung Galaxy Note 9 last week and it's time to see whether it's a good deal to buy this smartphone or not. Samsung Note 9 is the eighth phone of the series as company skips on number 6. Samsung Galaxy Note series is a very famous phone series all around the world due to it's unique stylus provided with the phone. This stylus is included from the very first phone in the series that is Samsung Galaxy Note but it has undergone a lot of changes from one generation to other.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is having the same design as that of Samsung Galaxy Note 8. The design is not exactly same but they look very identical. It is having the same glass back with metallic frame on sides. The back is protected by corning gorilla glass. On front this time it has a 6.4 inch tall screen while Samsung Galaxy Note 8 has 6.3" screen. This is the only difference between both of the phone's screen while the display is exactly same on both that is a 2K resolution AMOLED panel. The bezels on this phone are also very slim that's why the aspect ratio of the display is 18.5:9. The screen on front is curved due to 3D glass used. It doesn't go with the notch design which many of the companies are following these days while it goes with it's traditional design that is a single plate on top which houses ear piece, front camera and other sensors. But it depends on personal preference whether you like notch or not.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 chipset. This chipset also powers Samsung's previous flagship device that is Samsung S9/S9+. So we already know about the performance of this chipset that is awesome. This is also used on some other flagships that are Oneplus 6 and LG G7 ThinQ. Snapdragon 845 is company's top notch chip for flagships. So it provides fast performance in the device. For specs this chipset is based on octa core processor with four Kryo cores cloaked at 2.7GHz each and other four Kryo cores cloaked at 1.7GHz each. For better graphics this is powered by Adreno 630 GPU. So the phone will handle gaming and other graphic intensive tasks very smoothly. There is one more version of this phone which comes with Exynos 9810. This is Samsung's self made chip for it's flagship devices so the performance of this chip will also be top notch. This chipset is also based on octa core processor with four Mongoose M3 cores cloaked at 2.7 GHz each and other four cortex A-55 cores cloaked at 1.8 GHz each. For graphics there is Mali G72-MP18 GPU.

These two chipsets are among the fastest chips for smartphone in the market. So you shouldn't worry about the performance of the device. The performance of the device will be really fast. They will be able to do each and every task thrown to them smoothly whether it is gaming or rendering video, opening apps quickly or keeping them in memory. Both the chipsets are built on Samsung's 10nm FinFET. So the power consumption of the device will also be very low which will result in better battery life.

Now take a look at the camera of the device. Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is having exactly same camera setup as that present on Samsung Galaxy S9+. So the camera performance on the device will be really good. It has a dual camera setup at the back with 12MP,f/1.5-2.4 + 12MP,f/2.4 shooter. In this second one is a telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom. This is the second phone after Samsung s9+ to have a variable aperture which can change between f/2.4 to f/1.5 depending on the amount of light available in the scene. It can also detect itself the amount of light and can change aperture size itself. This camera can also record super slomo videos at 960 fps just like s9+. The camera can record videos upto 2160p @60fps. There is also support for OIS for better stability of the camera.

At front it has a secondary camera of 8MP,f/1.7. This lens has a very large aperture so the low lighting photos will be really good with this. This camera can record videos upto 1440p @30fps.

The main specification of this phone is it's stylus which comes with it. This time there are some changes in the stylus as well. It can do all the tasks which it can do in last years note device. You can write down notes, send written messages and also can draw on phone and apply your creativity to it. You can also trace out cutting with this stylus. This time this stylus comes with Bluetooth enabled, taking power from the phone itself. As it comes with Bluetooth feature it can be used as a remote control with a button provided on the stylus. Long press on button can open up camera, two taps will switch between the front and back camera and one other tap can click photo. This stylus get charged in one minute when plugged to the phone and can last long for an hour. This is a really good feature provided in the stylus this time.

This time Samsung Galaxy Note 9 comes with a bigger battery that is 4000 mah. So the battery will last for a longer time as phone is powered by processor based on 10nm architecture which is really power efficient. Also there is support of fast charging as well as wireless charging and it comes with fast charger bundled as well. Also there is one more better thing as well that is the base variant of the phone comes with 128GB internal and 6GB RAM while the top version comes with 512GB internal and 8GB RAM. Also there is a dedicated slot for microSD card which supports SD card upto 512GB. So it means you can have around 1TB of storage in your phone.

Also the phone doesn't skip on any sensor. It has ambient light, heart rate, fingerprint, accelerometer, compass, gyro, proximity, barometer, spO2 and barometer. The phone can be unlocked by fingerprint at back of the phone, iris scanning and face recognition. Face recognition is really fast and accurate and can also be used in dark as well. There is also support of Samsung Dex this time in which phone can be used as CPU for the computer, just we have to connect our phone to Samsung Dex and we should have a monitor, keyboard and mouse attached. This is a really good feature of the Samsung flagship devices although performance is not as good as a true computer but still it is good for basic computing.

This device also packs a new notebook class water carbon cooling system. This will help the device to keep the temperature of the device down and maintain it's performance to peak level. The phone comes in four colors metallic copper, lavender purple, ocean blue, midnight black.

Now it's time to see whether this phone is worth buying or not. First of all there is not much innovation in design of the phone. It comes with more or less same design as that of last year. There is an upgrade in the processor of the phone which is a good thing. Now camera has variable aperture size for different lighting conditions. It can also record super slomo videos. Stylus is also having Bluetooth functionality this year.

But many of the Samsung flagship owners have complained about the previous flagship phones going slow after 3-4 months of it's usage resulting in lags, frame drops and delays in apps opening. But now you will say that it is equipped with top notch hardware so how can this be possible. Yeah it is equipped with top notch hardware but problem is with operating system. The company is not able to do proper optimization between the software and hardware. This problem is also noticed by many of the renowned reviewers as well. So we can't say anything about Note 9 at this point but till now it's performance is top notch.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is priced at $1000 for 128GB model and $1250 for 512GB model. In India it starts at 67900 INR for lower version and 84900 INR for higher version. So should you buy this phone? It totally depends upon you. It comes with a marvelous design, fast processor, good camera and a large 4000 mah battery. That stylus adds up a lot to your choice. But many other flagships like Google Pixel 3 and Apple iPhone are going to launch in next few months. So I think you should wait for other smartphones to be launched and then decide. And if you already own a Samsung Note 8, you shouldn't even think of upgrading to Note 9 because you will not notice much change.